How to Care for Freshly Dyed Blonde Hair

There’s two important lessons that bottled blondes learn immediately following their first bleaching session: Rarely can you reach your desired shade in one go, and blonde hair is extremely difficult to care for. Honey or platinum, failure to start putting in the proper work it takes to maintain lighter strands as soon as you leave the salon, can quickly result in the three B’s (and we don’t mean blonde): brassiness, breakage, and bad texture.

“Your hair may feel a little weak and fragile for a few days to a week after such a drastic change,” explains Rita Hazan, celebrity colorist and owner of Rita Hazan Salon in New York. “But as long as you condition it, it will get stronger with time. The key is taking extra care of the hair while it is in this fragile state.”

Bleaching can seriously take a toll on hair, so conditioner will instantly become your best friend in order to repair it back to health. Hazan recommends treating strands to a weekly deep conditioning treatment like her Weekly Remedy Treatment ($42; ritahazan.com) to strengthen and hydrate hair to repair and prevent future breakage and frizz.

The final product in your bottle blonde arsenal? An in-shower gloss treatment applied two-four times weekly that will keep color shiny and vibrant like Rita Hazan True Color Ultimate Shine Gloss ($26; ritahazan.com). “This will help maintain the integrity of your hair and maintain shine and consistent color so you don't have to color often,” Hazan says.